The present disclosure is related to lithography, and more particularly to the design and manufacture of a surface which may be a reticle, a wafer, or any other surface, using character or cell projection lithography.
In the production or manufacturing of semiconductor devices, such as integrated circuits, optical lithography may be used to fabricate the semiconductor devices. Optical lithography is a printing process in which a lithographic mask or reticle is used to transfer patterns to a substrate such as a semiconductor or silicon wafer to create the integrated circuit. Other substrates could include flat panel displays or even photomasks. Also, extreme ultraviolet (EUV) or X-ray lithography are considered types of optical lithography. The reticle or multiple reticles may contain a circuit pattern corresponding to an individual layer of the integrated circuit and this pattern can be imaged onto a certain area on the substrate that has been coated with a layer of radiation-sensitive material known as photoresist or resist. Once the patterned layer is transferred the layer may undergo various other processes such as etching, ion-implantation (doping), metallization, oxidation, and polishing. These processes are employed to finish an individual layer in the substrate. If several layers are required, then the whole process or variations thereof will be repeated for each new layer. Eventually, a combination of multiples of devices or integrated circuits will be present on the substrate. These integrated circuits may then be separated from one another by dicing or sawing and then may be mounted into individual packages. In the more general case, the patterns on the substrate may be used to define artifacts such as display pixels or magnetic recording heads.
In the production or manufacturing of semiconductor devices, such as integrated circuits, maskless direct write may also be used to fabricate the semiconductor devices. Maskless direct write is a printing process in which patterns are transferred to a substrate such as a semiconductor or silicon wafer to create the integrated circuit. Other substrates could include flat panel displays, imprint masks for nano-imprinting, or even photomask. Desired patterns of a layer are written directly on the surface, which in this case is also the substrate. Once the patterned layer is transferred the layer may undergo various other processes such as etching, ion-implantation (doping), metallization, oxidation, and polishing. These processes are employed to finish an individual layer in the substrate. If several layers are required, then the whole process or variations thereof will be repeated for each new layer. Some of the layers may be written using optical lithography while others may be written using maskless direct write to fabricate the same substrate. Eventually, a combination of multiples of devices or integrated circuits will be present on the substrate. These integrated circuits are then separated from one another by dicing or sawing and then mounted into individual packages. In the more general case, the patterns on the surface may be used to define artifacts such as display pixels or magnetic recording heads.
As indicated, the lithographic mask or reticle comprises geometric patterns corresponding to the circuit components to be integrated onto a substrate. The patterns used to manufacture the reticle may be generated utilizing CAD (computer-aided design) software or programs. In designing the patterns the CAD program may follow a set of predetermined design rules in order to create the reticle. These rules are set by processing, design, and end-use limitations. An example of an end-use limitation is defining the geometry of a transistor in a way in which it cannot sufficiently operate at the required supply voltage. In particular, design rules can define the space tolerance between circuit devices or interconnect lines. The design rules are, for example, used to ensure that the circuit devices or lines do not interact with one another in an undesirable manner. For example, the design rules are used so that lines do not get too close to each other in a way that may cause a short circuit. The design rule limitations reflect, among other things, the smallest dimensions that can be reliably fabricated. When referring to these small dimensions, one usually introduces the concept of a critical dimension. These are, for instance, defined as the smallest width of a line or the smallest space between two lines, those dimensions requiring exquisite control.
One goal in integrated circuit fabrication by optical lithography is to reproduce the original circuit design on the substrate by use of the reticle. Integrated circuit fabricators are always attempting to use the semiconductor wafer real estate as efficiently as possible. Engineers keep shrinking the size of the circuits to allow the integrated circuits to contain more circuit elements and to use less power. As the size of an integrated circuit critical dimension is reduced and its circuit density increases, the critical dimensions of its corresponding mask pattern approaches the resolution limit of the optical exposure tool used in optical lithography. As the critical dimensions of the circuit layout become smaller and approach the resolution value of the exposure tool, the accurate transcription between the mask pattern and the actual circuit pattern developed on the resist layer becomes difficult. To further the use of optical lithography to transfer patterns having features that are smaller than the light wavelength used in the optical lithography process, a process known as optical proximity correction (OPC) has been developed. OPC alters the original layout on the mask to compensate for distortions caused by effects such as optical diffraction and the optical interaction of features with proximate features. OPC includes all resolution enhancement technologies performed with a reticle.
OPC adds sub-resolution lithographic features to mask patterns to reduce differences between the original mask pattern, that is, the design, and the final transferred circuit pattern on the substrate. The sub-lithographic features interact with the original mask pattern and with each other and compensate for proximity effects to improve the final transferred circuit pattern. One feature that is used to improve the transfer of the pattern is a sub-resolution assist feature (SRAF). Another feature that is added to improve pattern transference is referred to as “serifs”. Serifs are small features that can be positioned on a corner of a pattern to sharpen the corner in the final transferred image. As the limits of optical lithography are being extended far into the sub-wavelength regime, the OPC features must be made more and more complex in order to compensate for even more subtle interactions and effects. However, as imaging systems are pushed closer to their limits, the ability to produce reticles with sufficiently fine OPC features becomes critical. Although adding serifs or other OPC features to a mask pattern is advantageous, it also substantially increases the total features count in the mask pattern. For example, adding a serif to each of the corners of a square adds eight more rectangles to a mask or reticle pattern. Adding OPC features is a very laborious task and requires costly computation time that results in more expensive reticles. Not only are OPC patterns complex, but since optical proximity effects are long range compared to minimum line and space dimensions, the correct OPC patterns in a given location depend significantly on what other geometry is in the neighborhood. Thus, for instance, a line end will have different size serifs depending on what is near it on the reticle. This is even though the objective might be to produce exactly the same shape on the wafer. These slight but critical variations are important and have prevented others from being able to form reticle patterns. It is conventional to discuss the OPC-decorated patterns to be written on a reticle in terms of main features, that is features that reflect the design before OPC decoration, and OPC features, where OPC features might include serifs, jogs, and SRAF. To quantify what is meant by slight variations, a typical slight variation in OPC decoration from neighborhood to neighborhood might be 5% to 80% of a main feature size. Note that for clarity, variations in the design of the OPC are what is being referenced. Manufacturing variations, such as line-edge roughness and corner rounding, will also be present in the actual surface patterns. When these OPC variations produce substantially the same patterns on the wafer what is meant is that the geometry on the wafer is targeted to be the same within a specified error, which depends on the details of the function that that geometry is designed to perform, e.g., a transistor or a wire. Nevertheless, typical specifications are in the 2%-50% of a main feature range. There are numerous manufacturing factors that also cause variations, but the OPC component of that overall error is often in the range just listed.
There are a number of technologies used for forming patterns on a reticle, including using optical or particle beam systems. The most commonly used system is the variable shape beam (VSB) type, where a precise electron beam is shaped and steered onto a resist-coated surface of the reticle. These shapes are simple shapes, usually limited to rectangles of certain minimum and maximum sizes and triangles with their three internal angles being 45 degrees, 45 degrees, and 90 degrees of certain minimum and maximum sizes. At pre-determined locations, doses of electrons are shot into the resist with these simple shapes. The total writing time for this type of system increases with the number of shots. A second type of system is a character projection system. In this case there is a stencil in the system that has in it a variety of shapes which may be rectilinear, arbitrary-angled linear, circular, annular, part circular, part annular, or arbitrary curvilinear shapes, and may be a connected set of complex shapes or a group of disjointed sets of a connected set of complex shapes. An electron beam can be shot through the stencil to efficiently produce more complex patterns (i.e., characters) on the reticle. In theory, such a system could be faster than a VSB system because it can shoot more complex shapes with each time-consuming shot. Thus, an E shot with a VSB system takes four shots, but could be done with one shot with a character projection system. Note that shaped beam systems can be thought of as a special (simple) case of character projection, where the characters are just simple characters, usually rectangles or 45-45-90 triangles. It is also possible to partially expose a character. This can be done by, for instance, blocking part of the particle beam. For example, the E described above can be partially exposed as an F or an I, where different parts of the beam are cut off by an aperture. For a very complex reticle, one must fracture the pattern into nearly billions and sometimes approaching trillions of elemental shapes. There are, for instance, simple rectangular shapes for a VSB system or a limited number of characters in a character projection system. The more total instances of elemental shapes (characters) in the pattern, the longer and more expensive the write time. However, for writing surfaces such as an OPC-decorated reticle where there are numerous fine variations among even the smaller patterns, such projection systems are today impractical. The number of characters that can be made available among which the selection of characters by the projection machine takes minimal time is limited, today only allowing about 10-1000 characters. When faced with the plethora of slightly varying OPC patterns that are required to be placed on a reticle, no system or method has been available which can accomplish this task.
Thus, it would be advantageous to reduce the time and expense it takes to prepare and manufacture a reticle that is used for a substrate. More generally, it would be advantageous to reduce the time and expense it takes to prepare and manufacture any surface. It would also be desirable to have a stencil mask that contains some of the complex characters needed to produce or generate a surface having various patterns that are required to be transferred to a surface. For example, it is possible that a surface can have thousands of patterns that have only slight differences among each other. In order to prepare a surface it is desirable to have a stencil mask that can generate many of these patterns having slight differences. As discussed more fully herein, this can be accomplished by using a stencil mask that contains a set of characters that can be combined, modified, or adjusted to generate the patterns with many of the slight variations. Thus, there exists a need for a method and a system for manufacturing a surface that eliminates the foregoing problems associated with preparing a surface.